April 3, 2004

Space Predictions

I recently met a fascinating individual here in Toronto by the name of Talmon Firestone. Talmon, who will be both helping and presenting at TV04, is a student of the International Space University. Jeez, how cool is that? I didn't even know such a thing existed. Anyway, he is totally in the know about anything to do with current efforts to go into space and he has some interesting predictions:

- Spaceship One will win the X-Prize. This thing is gorgeous, elegant, and it actually looks like a spaceship.
- The first space elevator will be up sometime around 2015-20, but it will be a significant military objective (whoever controls the space elevator, argues Firestone, controls space).
- The first orbital hotel will go up relatively shortly. Shrouded in secrecy, work is being done on the first space hotel, Nautilus. Interestingly, the Hilton Hotel people are also supposedly working on an orbital hotel.

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George Dvorsky

Canadian futurist, science writer, and ethicist, George Dvorsky has written and spoken extensively about the impacts of cutting-edge science and technology—particularly as they pertain to the improvement of human performance and experience. He is a contributing editor at io9, the Chairman of the Board at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the program director for the Rights of Non-Human Persons program.